Wondering About iHOP

Have you ever been to an iHOP? Come on, be honest. I don’t care if it’s your favorite place. In fact, I’d genuinely like to find someone who goes regularly so they can explain the appeal to me, calmly and without judgment.

Don’t get me wrong. I like a good diner. In fact, I love a good diner. Give me cracked vinyl booths, a laminated menu the size of a dictionary, and a waitress who calls everyone “hon” and I’m happy. But iHOP? Not so much.

In the 26-plus years we’ve lived in our town, we have been to iHOP exactly once. Once. That is not a typo. Clearly they are not relying on my household to keep the lights on or the griddles warm.

We never really see their parking lot full. Maybe on Sunday mornings there’s a small crowd, but even then it feels more like a gathering of extras than actual neighbors. Who are these people? Where do they come from? I can tell you this much: I don’t know a single person who goes there with any regularity. Not one.

I drove by the other day and was surprised (flabbergasted, even) to see a sign proudly announcing “Now Open 24/7.” Wait, what? For a place that is rarely busy, and when it is busy appears to be filled with mysterious strangers, there is suddenly enough demand that it must never close? I never went to business school, but this one really made me stop and scratch my head.

Naturally, my mind wandered. Tony Soprano and his crew had Satriale’s Pork Store, a perfectly innocent-looking front for planning all manner of underworld activity. Could this be the same thing? If an iHOP never closes, no one would blink an eye at people coming and going at all hours of the night. Completely normal. Nothing to see here.

Or maybe it’s something bigger. A top-secret government lab, perhaps. At street level it’s pancakes and syrup, but forty levels below? Labs, armories, testing stations, people in lab coats saying things like “We’re not cleared to discuss that.” It would explain a lot.

There must be another explanation, maybe even a reasonable one that I’m simply not thinking of. I just cannot believe there is that much genuine, round-the-clock demand for overly sweet pancake stacks. But I remain open-minded. If you’re one of the regulars, I invite you, politely, to enlighten me.

--------------

Thanks for reading!

Frosty